The Two Cities

For the penultimate episode in our Art & Culture series we are joined by Dr. Greg Thornbury to discuss Art & Cultural Engagement. Dr. Thornbury is Vice President for Development at the New York Academy of Art in New York City and the author of Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music: Larry Norman and the Perils of Christian Rock. Over the course of the conversation we talk about problematic ways of conceiving of “cultural engagement,” bad forms of Christian art, and why the rock star Larry Norman was such a helpful model for what it means to be a Christian in the arts. One of the more intriguing aspects of the conversation is the notion of ”kayfabe,” which comes from the arena of professional wrestling, referring to the illusions of real fighting, but actually isn’t. Dr. Thornbury uses this concept as a fascinating metaphor for dishonest art. Team members on the episode from The Two Cities include Amber Bowen, Dr. Josh Carroll, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Rev. Daniel Parham, and Dr. Logan Williams. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the third installment of our series on Art & Culture, we are joined by Dr. Matthew Mullins for a conversation on Art & Biblical Literature. Dr. Mullins is Associate Professor of English and History of Ideas as well as Associate Dean for Academic Advising at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (Wake Forest, NC), and he is the author of Enjoying the Bible: Literary Approaches to Loving the Bible (Baker, 2021). Throughout the conversation we talk about the importance of approaching the Bible from a literary standpoint in order to understand it at a deeper affective level that goes beyond the cerebral. Team members from The Two Cities on the episode include: Amber Bowen, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Grace Emmett, and Dr. Chris Porter. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Continuing our series on Art and Culture, we are joined by Makoto Fujimura, who is the founder of the International Arts Movements and the Fujimura Institute and the author of Art and Faith: A Theology of Making (with Yale University Press). Over the course of our conversation we talk about the relationship of art to modernism, beauty and subjectivity, and the notion of abstract art. As we discuss art from a faith perspective, our discussion turns to focus on reflections on art in the midst of loss and grief and what that teaches us theologically about grieving alongside Jesus (cf. John 11:35) and what the nature of the new creation will be. Team members on the episode include Amber Bowen, Dr. Josh Carroll, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, and Grace Sangalang Ng. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To kick off our series on Art & Culture we are joined by Dr. Esther Meek, who is Professor of Philosophy at Geneva College, and the author of a number of important works on epistemology, including Longing to Know: The Philosophy of Knowledge for Ordinary People (with Brazos) and Loving to Know: Introducing Covenant Epistemology (with Cascade). In this episode Dr. Meek addresses the relationship between Art and Knowing. Over the course of our conversation we discuss how modernism has sidelined philosophy along with art, which has really taken away a key facet of what it means to be human in the world. Along the way as we discuss everything from boredom to Harry Potter to the Enneagram and the Night Blooming Cereus, Dr. Meek models a lively and exuberant appreciation for reality and an approach to knowing that is inherently creative, integrative, and beautiful. Team members on the episode include Amber Bowen, Dr. Josh Carroll, and Dr. John Anthony Dunne. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we process the horrific events that took place in Atlanta earlier this week in which a twenty-one year old white male attacked three Asian-owned business, including spas and massage parlors in the broader metro area. We also address the narrative that has emerged about the motivation for the murders. Was this a racialized hate crime? Or was it a sexualized crime rooted in the shooter’s “sexual temptation”? We affirm that this is in fact a false dichotomy and that intersectional thinking is required to do justice to the full complexity of the issues at play here. Over the course of the conversation we address the rise of Asian American hate crimes since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, evangelical purity culture, and also the fact that this shooter was a Christian and how Christians have responded too quickly to denounce any significance to that fact. Team members on the episode include: Jennifer Guo, Grace Sangalang Ng, Dr. Josh Carrol, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Brandon Hurlbert, Rev. Daniel Parham, Dr. Chris Porter, and Dr. Logan Williams.Links to reports and articles mentioned in the episode listed below:Stop AAPI Hate National ReportAlbert Tate's Good News Today - March 18, 2021After “The China Virus” Went Viral: Racially Charged Coronavirus Coverage and Trends in Bias Against Asian Americans by Sean Darling-Hammond, Eli K. Michaels, Amani M. Allen, David H. Chae, Marilyn D. Thomas, Thu T. Nguyen, Mahasin M. Mujahid, Rucker C. Johnson“The Atlanta massacre is yet another reminder we desperately need race-conscious discipleship” by Raymond ChangResponding to anti-Asian Violence with Creativity from the Margins by Dr. Michelle Ami Reyes Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we recap and reflect on the gender series that we’ve been doing since mid-November 2020. The series spans eighteen episodes, beginning with “Paul and Masculinity with Grace Emmett” (November 11, 2020) and ending with “The Great Sex Rescue with Sheila Wray Gregoire” (March 10, 2020). As we explain in this conversation, we regard every episode in between these two episodes as being part of the series, including the ones on racial matters, such as, “Whiteness in Biblical Scholarship with Dr. Ekaputra Tupamahu,” “Critical Theory: Fact, Fiction, or Fallacy? With Dr. Matthew Arbo and Dr. Scott Coley,” and “African American Readings of Paul with Dr. Lisa Bowens.” Over the course of the episode, we debrief some of our highlights from the series, some connections and themes that we noticed across the episodes, some reactions and responses we received from people who tuned in, and we also extended the discussion further to emphasize the importance and implications of these conversations for current events related to violence against women in the light of the murder of Sarah Everard in London in early March 2021. Contributors on the episode from The Two Cities include Amber Bowen, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Grace Emmett, Brandon Hurlbert, Grace Sangalang Ng, Dr. Chris Porter, Dr. Logan Williams, and our newest contributor, Jennifer Guo, who is a PhD student in New Testament at the University of Notre Dame (South Bend, IN). Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

(CW: Mature Content and Abuse) On today’s episode we talk about sex with Sheila Wray Gregoire, a well-known speaker, blogger, podcaster, and author of several books on sex, including the recently published The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You’ve Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended (with Baker). In our conversation we talk about lies that we tell in the evangelical church about sex, particularly gendered tropes for men and women respectively. Sheila informs us that these lies impact lots of things, including sexual satisfaction in marriage. She was able to determine loads of fascinating information like this from conducting the largest survey of Christian women regarding sexuality (over 20,000 women were surveyed). Along the way Sheila also chats with us about purity culture, vaginismus, evangelical sexual scandals, and more. Team members on the episode include: Amber Bowen, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Grace Emmett, Grace Sangalang Ng, Dr. Chris Porter, and Dr. Logan Williams. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we discuss the concept of “Biblical Womanhood” from a historical perspective. To do so we are joined by Dr. Beth Allison Barr, who is Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Associate Professor of History at Baylor University (Waco, TX), and the author of the forthcoming book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth (with Brazos). In her new book, Dr. Barr contends that “Biblical Womanhood” isn’t biblical at all, but rather is the product of people. She relays to us in our conversation some of the ways that she defends that thesis in her book, some key insights and motivations behind writing the book, and also some of the plans she originally had for certain chapters. Along the way we make reference to Jordan Peterson, whether a concept like “Biblical Womanhood” can be salvaged and reinvested with new meaning, the cultural tensions of patriarchy and feminism, and the implications of Dr. Barr’s new book for recent sexual abuse scandals that have come to light regarding Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. Team members on the episode from The Two Cities include Amber Bowen, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Grace Emmett, and Dr. Chris Porter. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this episode we discuss various topics related to gender and the Trinity, including: the gendered language about the family of God (i.e. “sons”) and the gendered language for the persons of the Trinity (i.e. Father and Son), the representation of God with maternal imagery in the Bible, and the topic of the Eternal Functional Subordination of the Son (EFS), which is a proxy discussion for a complementarian approach to gender. For this discussion we are joined by Dr. Madison Pierce, who is assistant professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Deerfield, Illinois), and the author of Divine Discourse in the Epistle to the Hebrews: The Recontextualization of Spoke Quotations of Scripture (Cambridge University Press, 2020). After digging into these topics related to God and gender, we close out our conversation with some reflections on gender representation in theological education and Dr. Pierce's Enneagram type. Team members from The Two Cities podcast on the episode include: Amber Bowen, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, and Dr. Chris Porter. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On today’s episode we begin the season of Lent with a discussion on ecological grief with our guest, Hannah Malcolm, who is PhD Candidate in Theology at Durham University studying ecological grief as a form of theological knowledge. She is also the editor of Words for a Dying World: Stories of Grief and Courage from the Global Church (SCM Press, 2020) containing essays, poems, and anecdotes related to our ecological crisis. Over the course of the episode, Hannah helps us understand the nature of ecological grief relative to other forms of trauma. We chat about what prevents evangelicals from participating in this process of grieving, noting some important distinctions on this issue in American and British contexts respectively. Hannah also addresses some of the insufficiencies for how the church resources Scripture and how the church often chooses to address the issue collectively. She informs us about gendered components to this issue re: political leadership in helping to ameliorate the problem, whether men or women are more likely to take ecological action, and who is most culpable and also most vulnerable to climate crisis. Team members from The Two Cities on the episode include Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Dr. Grace Emmett, and Dr. Logan Williams. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.